Stop Seattle From Turning Our Parks Into Homeless Encampments

The City of Portland enacted this same bill & within 6 months cancelled it due to it's absolute failure. This is not helping the homeless, it is only encouraging more people who don't want help to just come to Seattle & get free hand outs. I'm tired of paying tax dollars to the City of Seattle for doing nothing to help the homeless!!! I am also tired of going to local parks & having to be concerned about used needles, feces & vomit on the ground where my dog or someone's child could come into contact with this filth.

Turning parks into homeless camps is not the right solution to the problem.

This is a bad idea. This does not provide the services these people need. mental health and substance abuse treatment. It will only normalize their situation and bring drugs and violence that comes with it to our parks and close to our children

I live in the Green Lake neighborhood near the park and have noticed that the problem is getting worse as far as homeless people setting up tents in the park. Our neighborhood parks should not be turned into homeless centers.

Is the council going to increase the parks budget?

Should our parks and similar public spaces become the dumping grounds for unsafe, unhealthy, and thereby unusable for taxpayers and their families – and unsavory to regular non-Seattle visitors – we all should immediately petition the King County Real Estate Taxing agency to have a wholesale reduction of our evaluations. Small businesses adjacent to these “campgrounds” will also feel the loss of business, as well as abuse of their refuse bins needed for their operation. It is extraordinary that this proposal is even out for review. But really, are we really surprised at all that this is the best that our city administration can do?

I agree we need to find homes for the homeless, our parks are for everyone and using them as a campground or a tent city is not a good solution.

Parks are not the answer. Homeless people need real shelters with facilities - bathrooms, ability to take showers, waste disposal, access to real help.

These public parks belong to all tax payers to be used for enjoyment, not for homeless encampments.

HOUSE the homeless!! Use the 140 million $$ instead of building a fancy police bunker.

Clean these messes up and get the people in semi- permanent shelters and housing.

This is a Joke what are our Council members thinking

This is not a good solution - it's passing the problem on vs solving it at its roots.

Thank you!

I've seen many ridiculous things come out of the Council and Mayor's Office in my decade of living in the city, but this has to be the absolute most ridiculous.

I'm all for camping, as a matter of fact I do quite a bit of it. I'm also all for the many services already available to homeless and low income people, but this Bill 118794 - will only act to enable those living on the streets to continue longheld patterns of behavior tantamount to being an upstanding citizen. There are countless services already available to help the individuals in this population work on resume's, find meaningful work, and live full lives. This Bill will simply enable a downward spiral of our parks not being safe for children to play, let alone the un-sanitary conditions (not to mention the tax payer impact of costs of clean-up, etc).

People belong in housing, not tents in parks. You just got all this housing money and you think setting up campgrounds in all the parks is the right thing to do?? HOUSING. HOUSING FIRST.

I oppose allowing camping in city parks. The City Council needs to identify safe and sanitary "campgrounds" and make them available to the homeless who are waiting for permanent shelter.

We can do better with drug prevention and rehabilitation programs that are public funded and in the public interest.

City Parks were not set up for campers.